


The Vegan

by Mia Djojowasito (peppersasen)



Series: The Fifth Wall & B-Sides [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Flash Fic, Gen, Other, Sjögren's syndrome, The Fifth Wall (B-side), Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 01:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17819624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppersasen/pseuds/Mia%20Djojowasito
Summary: Vegan boy meats omnivorous girl. Hypocrisy ensues.





	The Vegan

Kat stood at the counter and ordered the following: bacon Big Mac, Quarter Pounder with cheese bacon, French fries—large, bacon and chicken salad, a chocolate shake, French vanilla cappuccino, chicken nuggets—spicy buffalo sauce, five pieces of spicy chicken with rice, and two Cokes.

“Someone’s hungry,” said the judgmental look on the woman at the counter’s face.

It was difficult, especially with her history of eating disorders, but Kat learned to ignore that look. She had to do what she had to do.

Her stomach growled with hunger.

A large bag of McDonald’s slid across the counter several minutes later, Kat thanked the woman (not for giving her the funny look) and smiled, and took the bag.

Kat got on her bike. As she pedalled, she thought about festival or rally or whatever she saw at the park across the McDonald’s earlier that Sunday morning.

It wasn’t totally clear to Kat what it was about. A mish-mash of sugar and spice and everything nice, she supposed; animal rights, human rights, environmental sustainability, feminism, with some progressive politics thrown in.

A beautiful, charismatic man speaking at the podium caught Kat’s attention. He spoke about how veganism would ensure a better environment for our future children, how it would end animal cruelty, how veganism had health benefits, and how it was all backed by science.

Kat took all his words in as she lean on a lamp post, and even made eye-contact with him from afar. Eye-contact that left a lasting sense of “shame-on-you” inside of her.

The thought of his words—of _him_ —stuck with her all day.

He had an interesting name, Julian Sjögren, according to a pamphlet they handed out at the park. He headed a local non-profit vegan organisation.

The pamphlet was printed on one side of recycled paper, the sheet Kat received was formerly a pizza restaurant’s list of promotions from the month prior. As if to make up for the sins of the pizza parlour, the vegan side was dedicated to the non-profit organisation Julian headed. It listed the Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube accounts, and a website for the organisation.

Julian stepped down the podium, replaced by a particularly sanctimonious woman who seemed as though she was sure to accuse you of ‘misogyny’ if you dare criticise her for even slightest completely-unrelated-to-gender thing. Kat shifted to lean on the other side of the lamp post, the side facing the McDonald’s instead of the park, in fear of gazing into the woman’s eyes and risk turning into stone.

Kat would spend the rest of her afternoon draining her smartphone’s precious battery juice to consume various posts from Julian’s social media accounts. Everything from feel-good posts about sustainability, a few photos of Julian thrown in, to graphic photos of farm animals being abused in the worst possible ways—which made her feel sick. The likes, the retweets, and reblogs were plentiful. Through a recent YouTube video where Julian shares his minimalistic über-green eco-friendly lifestyle, Kat learns that he’s single and lives alone.

She scrolled and scrolled until a notification from an app on her smartphone told her it was time to go.

And so, into the McDonald’s she went. She felt conflicted and became slightly disoriented as she placed her order at the counter. She couldn’t concentrate on details. Thankfully, everything was neatly listed on her smartphone, which she read off to the woman at the counter.

The social media posts and the vegan man’s speech at the park left her feeling dirty afterwards.

She was a cruel animal abuser. There were holes in the sky growing wider and wider because she eats cows. A good-for-nothing human being who existed only to shit on the Earth.

Vegans were the clean people, she was vile and dirty.

She wanted to shower, but how do you cleanse yourself of yourself?

Kat wanted to become a vegan too, she wanted to do it for the animals, the Earth.

 _But could I ever survive without cheese?_ She wondered as she pedalled her bike down the street. _Is it really so terrible to eat eggs?_

She wasn’t sure she could afford to go on such a strict diet again when she was addicted to self-control and self-inflicted deprivation, a tendency for eating disorders. Following a strict vegan dirty might just become a downward spiral that could potentially end badly for her. She could relapse. And she’d had enough of therapy.

She wasn’t asking for more inner-trouble but the sense of shame from the eye-contact she made with Julian Sjögren lingered. She wanted inner-peace.

 _Julian_. Wasn’t that what John Lennon had named one of his children? God, even his _name_ had a humanitarian ring to it.

Kat finally arrived at the apartment complex. She wasn’t really thirsty, but her mouth was dry. She parked her bike, locked it onto a rack, took a sip of water from her tumbler, and then lifted the heaviest bag of McDonald’s she’d ever carried in her life with her. It was _a lot_ of food.

The lift was out of order, _still_. So she climbed up the flights of stairs to the fifth floor, walked through the hallway, turning her head to glance at the apartment numbers left and right, left and right until she finally arrived at the door number she was looking for. When she finally stood in front of the appropriate door, she paused to breathe.

Resting the heavy bag of McDonald’s by her feet, she flexed her hands and fingers, shook them around to relieve the tension and the tightness, and then proceeded to knock on the door with her still-aching knuckles.

“Who is it?!” asked a male from behind the door. His heavy voice sounded distant and preoccupied, too preoccupied to look through the door viewer.

“Uber Eats!” Kat yelled back, hoping she was audible through the thick door.

A few stomp, stomp, stomp sounds of heavy thompy footsteps later, a man answered the door.

It was Julian Sjögren, The Vegan.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is so badly-written! I wrote it on a whim—just got the idea for this flash fiction last night, after chatting on a comments section of a blog that I frequent (about Uber Eats and Grubhub and Tinder and Grindr). So, basically got the idea on a Saturday night and published it here on the next day, on a Sunday morning.
> 
> I also apologise for any inaccuracies—I live in Indonesia and I’m basing the logistics in this story on how GrabFood (a local online food delivery service that I personally use in Jakarta) works.
> 
> This was written in only a few hours as I didn’t want to spend too much time marinating/editing this because I need to spend the free time I do have on my other [longer] short story, “The Fifth Wall” which I’m planning to publish here on March 12, 2019.
> 
> Dedicated to Henrik Sjögren and Venus Williams (in a nice way, not in a sneakily mean or nasty way at all).


End file.
